Page 91 - The Love Hypothesis

“You—” She noticed the way his mouth was twitching and wondered

when exactly they’d gotten on teasing terms. “How do you two know each
other?”
“He was a postdoc in my lab, back when I was a Ph.D. student. We’ve

kept in touch and collaborated through the years.”
So he must be four or five years older than Adam.

“You went to Harvard, right?”
He nodded, and a terrifying thought occurred to her. “What if he feels

obliged to take me on because I’m your fake girlfriend?”
“Tom won’t. He once fired his cousin for breaking a flow cytometer.

He’s not exactly tenderhearted.”
Takes one to know one, she thought. “Listen, I’m sorry this is forcing
you to lie to your friend. If you want to tell him that this is fake . . .”

Adam shook his head. “If I did, I’d never live it down.”
She let out a laugh. “Yeah, I can see that. And honestly it wouldn’t

reflect well on me, either.”
“But, Olive, if you do end up deciding that you want to go to Harvard,

I’ll need you to keep it a secret until the end of September.”
She gasped, realizing the implications of his words. “Of course. If

people know that I’m leaving, the department chair will never believe that
you’re not leaving, too. I hadn’t even thought of it. I promise I won’t tell
anyone! Well, except for Malcolm and Anh, but they’re great at keeping

secrets, they’d never—”
His eyebrow rose. Olive winced.

“I will make them keep this secret. I swear.”
“I appreciate it.”

She noticed that Tom was on his way back to the table and leaned closer
to Adam to quickly whisper, “One more thing. The talk he mentioned, the

one he’s giving tomorrow?”
“The one you ‘can’t wait’ for?”
Olive bit the inside of her cheek. “Yes. When and where is it going to

be?”